The Effects of Acute Stress on the Neural Correlates of Decision-Making

Abstract

Stress has been defined in many ways but is typically a response to a change in the body’s current state. Stress affects decision-making, and the effects of stress on processes involved in decision-making can be indirectly measured through EEG. The purpose of this study was to investigate how acute stress affects sub-processes involved in decision-making. We hypothesized that acute stress would affect how individuals respond to rewards and pay attention to environmental changes. Stress was physiologically present in the stress condition group, as seen in a mean increased heart rate compared to the control condition group. The stress condition group reported being more subjectively stressed than the control group, seen in STAI and PANAS questionnaire decreased positive and increased negative affect scores compared to the control group. For neural responses, while insignificant, there was a trend towards being less sensitive to environmental changes (attentional sensitivity; P300 component activity) in the stress condition, but no significant changes for reward sensitivity. Further research is needed to explore the implications for reward sensitivity that utilizes multiple tasks and includes cortisol measurement. Stress is common to everyday life and has been implicated chronically in numerous health conditions. Understanding how stress affects executive function, particularly decision-making, is therefore crucial in both the shortand long-term, as demonstrated by the initial findings of this study.